Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Matthew
8:1-13)
And Jesus
stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean!”
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Today, in
our Gospel, Jesus heals a leper.
We read: When
[Jesus] came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. Our reading
today is at the beginning of Matthew chapter 8, and in the three chapters
before—Matthew 5, 6 & 7—we read about where Jesus preaches his wonderful “Sermon
on the Mount”. There are so many well-known passages of Jesus in that sermon: Blessed
are the poor in Spirit… You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the
world…If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away… Let
what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”…If anyone slaps you on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also…Love your enemies…Jesus also teaches us the
Lord’s prayer…Also: You cannot serve God and money…Seek first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness…Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will
find, knock, and the door will be opened to you…Whatever you wish that others
would do to you, do also to them…And right at the end, we read about the
wise man building his house upon the rock.
There are so
many passages that are well-known to all kinds of people even outside the
church. How often do people talk about turning the other cheek? Or how often do
people say on TV or on the radio, “I’m not religious, but I believe that we
should do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? (They don’t realise
that these words were taught to them by Jesus!) Or sometimes, I have seen it on
the window of an op-shop or a second-hand shop: Seek and you will find!
At the end
of this sermon we read: When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were
astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority,
and not as their scribes. Can you imagine being there, hearing this sermon
the first time? The crowds were astonished at his teaching, it says. He
was teaching them as one who had authority, power, divine strength, divine
wisdom. I would encourage each of you to take a bible sometime, maybe even this
week, and read Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7 in one sitting—it would be a
wonderful blessing.
And now, after Jesus has preached this wonderful sermon, what happens? We read: And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
What a
wonderful example this leper gives us! He comes to Jesus and kneels before him
and submits himself completely to his will. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean.
You see, in
the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had revealed his divine will. He had
given a lengthy sermon telling the people—and us!—how He thinks, what goes
through His perfect, divine mind! And a wonderful powerful will this is!
Psalm 12 says: The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in
a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. Luther summarises in the
Small Catechism: The good and gracious will of God is done when he breaks
and hinders every evil plan and purpose of the devil, the world, and our sinful
nature, which do not want us to hallow God’s name or let his kingdom come; and
when He strengthens and keeps us firm in His Word and faith until we die. This
is his good and gracious will.
So, in the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reveals to us God’s holy will—his strict punishing law
and his sweet, comforting gospel. And also, Jesus shows to all the people that
his will isn’t simply a whole lot of talk—mere, empty words—but that his will
acts and does things. When Jesus speaks, things happen. His words are powerful,
just as at the beginning of the world, he said: Let there be light, and
there was light.
Now, most of
the time, people like a good show, and people are impressed by power! We
like a good fireworks display, a parade, an acrobat, or whatever. And since we
also know that God is powerful, we look for displays of power in the
church. And sometimes when we come home from church, we might say, “I feel
really energised today!” or “I really felt uplifted by the singing today!” or
“The pastor got really fired up today!”
But then
there’s a trap: instead of longing to hear God’s word, we simply look for the power.
Instead of seeking God’s word as if were seeking for the last drop of the water
of life left on this earth, we come simply treating God’s word as if it were a
“coffee shot” to keep us going.
You see,
God’s word is actually a life-giving divine power. Sometimes God allows
us to feel and sense this power, but sometimes he speaks his words to us while
we are wrestling with the most profound weaknesses and problems. We see no
power at work in us and in our lives. God’s word doesn’t have the
“caffeinating” effect that we want it to have!
And so, we
start to grumble. Think about the Israelites: God gave them his holy
perfect law on Mt Sinai, and then what did they do? They grumbled and
complained! So we start to get bored with God’s word, we look to other ways of
getting our “coffee shot”, maybe from self-help books from the local book shop,
from exercise, from diets, from healthy food, or whatever else the world has to
offer—maybe even quite harmful things: booze, drugs, pornography, gambling, or
sometimes people just try to escape through work and hard slog. So what happens
to God’s word? We start to think that it just doesn’t do the job anymore, it
just doesn’t work. We become spiritual lepers. We become infected
with a disease, which we can only see on our skin, but which penetrates through
the whole body. We can’t feel anything anymore.
Isn’t it
strange that after one of Jesus’ most powerful and wonderful sermons, the first
person to speak to him is a leper? And leprosy is such a terrible thing:
a disease which shows itself in the skin, but also effects the nerves, and
causes a person not to feel anything. Lepers could have bad accidents when they
bump into things or cut and scratch themselves, but can’t feel it.
And what
does this leper do? He comes to Jesus, kneels before him and submits himself to
his will with all his disease, all his problems, and all his needs. Jesus’
words really are the water of life, the bread of life, living food, living
medicine, life-giving power and nourishment for body and soul. He is the one
who works his word in us—not by allowing us constantly to feel its power—but
through our weakness. St Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12: To keep me
from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,
a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep
me from being conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that
it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.” Jesus’ word is powerful and sufficient
even in this leper, who feels nothing or very little with his hands and fingers,
but perceives that the living power of God comes from the mouth of Jesus. And
Jesus is happy and willing to heal him.
And even in
each and every one of our weaknesses and diseases and sicknesses, Jesus calls
us to come and kneel before him just like this leper and submit ourselves humbly
to his good and gracious will. Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
St Peter says: Humble yourselves under
the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting
all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. And he will make you
clean. Sometimes, we want to be made clean now, and we want to be clean in
this life. But Jesus will only do this if it serves to our eternal
benefit and to his eternal glory. Instead, he may wish to increase
in us the desire for eternal life. Whatever happens, we need to know that
Jesus’ will is good and gracious. Give thanks to the Lord for he is
good, for his love endures forever. My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.
Jesus
himself knows this power in weakness full well since he died for us on the
cross and made full atonement for the sins of the whole world, not as a leper
who felt nothing, but as one who outwardly felt every whip-lash, every nail,
and also inwardly, every insult, every mockery.
We read in
our Gospel reading: Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Because of the
death of Jesus, death for Christians will not be a time when leprosy is increased.
Many people today think that when we die, that’s it!—nothing happens. And then
we simply get put in the ground, let the worms do their work, or simply get
burnt in an oven. People believe that death is the ultimate leprosy when
we don’t feel anything anymore: no more pain, no more sorrow, but also no more joy
and no more happiness.
This is not
the Christian faith. This is a counterfeit hope, a fake hope.
This is a hope that forgets that we are made up of both a body and a soul. In
fact, St Paul even talks of three things: May your whole spirit and soul and
body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He speaks here of spirit
and soul and body. Joy, sorrow, pain, happiness—these things are not simply
chemical, hormonal reactions, as if our human bodies are no better than robots.
They involve our spirit and soul and body. Mary says: My soul magnifies the
Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.
When we die,
our Christian faith is that, like the poor man Lazarus, we would be carried by
the angels to Abraham’s bosom. Our faith is that on that day, we will be with
Jesus in Paradise, as he says to the thief on the cross. Our faith is that like
St Stephen, that Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of God, will come and
receive our spirit.
Even when we
are dead in the grave, our souls and spirits will be kept safe by Jesus in his
hands. And even after that, we believe that one day there will be a
resurrection from the dead, when both body and soul will be reunited in a
glorious way. We read in 1 Corinthians 15: Behold! I tell you a mystery. We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will
be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
We shall be
changed—and we shall realise just what lepers we have been all along. We
shall realise just what it is to feel the power and love of God, when he
calls us up from the graves, and from all the dust of the earth. We shall
all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, just as this man in
our reading was immediately healed of his leprosy. So even today in the church,
when we come to hear God’s word, we come to be healed of our leprosy, not in
sight, but by faith. God gives us this healing through his word as a down-payment,
and our souls won’t feel the power of this word as they should. Only when we
die will we be free for the first time from our leprosy.
Jesus tells
him: See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them. Jesus wanted
this man to be restored into the Jewish nation in the proper way and through
the proper means, through the priests in the temple.
We no longer
have a temple and priests, but Jesus is our temple—he is the place where we
come and worship. We come and gather not around a building, but around Jesus’
own life-giving flesh, as he speaks to us his life-giving word and gives us his
body and blood to eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. And so that we can appear
before God’s throne—both in the future and as we pray before God each day—Jesus
himself has offered to God the Father the most perfect gift of all: his own
body and blood, his spirit and soul, as the payment for all our sin and
weakness. And this sacrifice that Jesus made on Good Friday, Jesus actually
gives to us through baptism and washes us with that blood, and unites us to his
body, as a proof. So whenever the devil wants to undermine your faith
and plant doubts in your mind and corrode your faith into leprosy, you
can say: I have proof! Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead for
me. And he baptised me with water and with his own words. There’s the proof! I
don’t need to show the devil power at work in me—in fact, I don’t need
to show the devil anything at all! But Jesus saves me, his word is powerful,
his promise is true, and he cleanses our hearts from all attacks of the devil,
and gives to us and shares with us his perfect purity and cleanness and holiness.
So let’s
also come to Jesus, thank him for his word—his powerful word—which works great
wonders in us, even when we don’t see it, even in our most profound weaknesses.
Let’s also thank him for his good and gracious will, where he desires to purify
us and make us clean from all sin, weakness, and all our problems each day. But
most importantly, he will do this on that day in the future when we will become
perfect clean from all sin, in the next life. The purity doesn’t come from us,
it comes from Jesus. Jesus is the one who died and rose again for us, to cover
us over completely with his blood, and forgive each and every single one of our
sins.
Amen.
Come Lord
Jesus, and cleanse us from our leprosy. Forgive us all our sin, and create in
us new and clean hearts. Work in us powerfully through your word, despite our
weakness, and fill us with your Holy Spirit. Amen.
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